McCaffery proud after road win
Q: You guys were 16-25 from three after going 16-66 in the previous three games. Did you see this coming?
McCAFFERY: I don’t know if you ever see 16 makes coming. I would say this, I think we have a lot of good shooters. Teams have been really locking in on Pete and I think if you do that, others have opportunities to make shots and step up. I thought we were really connected offensively in terms of sharing the ball and moving it. They were really working hard on Pete and trying to be physical in the post. Sometimes we had some long possessions where we swung it and swung it and Brady hits two and Nicholas hits three and Pete hits three and then obviously, Jordan was on fire and Tyler Cook was tremendous.
Q: Can you talk about your defensive effort and how much the zone bothered them today?
McCAFFERY: I think the zone does a lot of things. It limits the times you have to guard all their ball screen stuff with the quickness that they have. They find people on screen roll as well as anybody I have ever scouted. They share the ball too and they have multiple shooters. The zone keeps everything in front of you, for the most part. One of the concerns I had was rebounding, but I thought we did a really good job there. We just tried to contest and they got away from us early. They made 7 in the first half and that’s usually a recipe for getting a team out of a zone, but luckily we made 8, so we had a lead and stayed in the zone. Once you get a double digit lead, it changes everything a little bit. They were taking a long time to shoot the ball, which is what we want. They were moving it and I thought they were trying to get it to the corner. They really hurt us with corner three’s at our place. They overload with ball screen and run good stuff against it. I thought we did a good job against that today.
Q: You took Pete out early in the second half and went with Baer. Were you trying to go bigger with your forwards today?
McCAFFERY: This is a big and strong team and they have some length. Huerter and Jackson are long, so we went with it there. I thought that Pete can back and gave us great minutes the rest of the way. That’s what I am going to do. I am going to rotate a lot of guys and play different combinations. There’s no set combination that I am going to go with.
Q: You had 15 offensive boards and 30 second chance points today. What do you attribute that to?
McCAFFERY: Well, a couple of things. We have a couple guys that are good at that. Ahmad Wagner and Nicholas Baer in particular and they played a lot in the second half. Cook is getting better and Dom Uhl is good at it. When you play this team and they are putting the pressure on Peter Jok that they did, you have opportunities because the defenders are aware of where he is. Whether it be a ball screen or a down screen, they are up, so you have chance to go back and get it. It’s kind of what kept us in the game the last time. We shot it poorly and got down 14, or something like that, but we came back and took the lead because we got 20 offensive rebounds. It was really the only thing that kept us in the game.
Q: You had a little scare with Bohannon yesterday with a possible broken finger?
McCAFFERY: Yeah, he busted his finger in practice and we sent him in for x-rays before we got on the plane and it was negative. Good thing it was. Maybe we should hurt the other finger. (laugh)
Q: What were you hoping to do with all the offensive rebounds? Did you want them to kick back out or just go back up with it?
McCAFFERY: It depends on time and score. In some ways it depends on who gets it. Are they jammed up or do they have an opportunity to put it back up? Baer is pretty good and he went and got the one and put it right back up. Ahmad got one and there was a lot of traffic and you can’t even see, so you throw it back out. You want some of those second shot three opportunities because everyone goes for the ball and you can find people.
Q: Cook had a really good game today. Did you like that match-up inside with Dodd?
McCAFFERY: Truthfully, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a match-up thing. He scored a lot of those in transition where he ran the floor and posted hard. He did score some in the set offense, but it wouldn’t matter who was on him. We are going to go to him because he’s our guy.
Q: Is it nice to get a road win in a tough building like this?
McCAFFERY: Yeah. We have played pretty well. We had two tough double overtime losses at Nebraska and Minnesota, so it’s not like we have played horribly.
Q: Bigger picture, do you think this helps you in terms of the Big Ten Tournament?
McCAFFERY: Any win helps. Truthfully, and you know me, I don’t look at that at all. Right now I am just thinking about Wisconsin. If you take care of your business, that will take care of itself. I don’t think you want to start looking at that with three, four, or five games left to go. The fact that the players were aware of it and won the last two, I applaud them for that. I’m proud of them.